Rose Kennedy:The Life and Times of a Political Matriarch

Barbara A. Perry

In this portrait of Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (1890-1995), Barbara Perry gained access to 300 boxes of Rose's personal letters and journals held at the John F. Kennedy Library. The woman that emerges in this definitive biography of the family matriarch is one who promoted and protected a political dynasty through a lifetime of sorrow and loss. She used prayer, shopping, travel, and medication to cope with a philandering husband and the tragic deaths of four of her nine children, but through it all, Perry reveals the private woman behind the pain.